Abstract
This study examines whether supportive work environments can reduce or eliminate gender-based performance differences even in highly competitive Wall Street careers. Using a large sample of over 1.5 million forecasts issued by more than 9,000 sell-side equity analysts spanning more than two decades, we find that female equity analysts exhibit superior forecasting performance when they operate in women-friendly work environments: They issue more accurate, bolder, and timelier forecasts. The forecasting performance of female analysts exhibits further improvement when the local environment is more favorable to women, as evidenced by friendlier abortion laws, lower degree of sexism, and fewer per-capita sexual harassment cases. Exploiting analyst moves across brokerages, we demonstrate that improvements in supportive environment generate improvements in forecast accuracy and timeliness